Handling of the Application

An applicant sends a grant application to the Foundation. What happens next?

The Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation’s grants can be applied once a year during a defined application period. The grants can be sought only through the online application system.

Once the deadline has expired the secretariat checks that the application is under the appropriate category to ensure that the right expert will read it. The application is furthered to the expert who then assesses the scientific or artistic value of the project.

The assessment of the applications is based on peer review. The Foundation uses experts, who have requisite expertise on the artistic or scientific field to assess the applications. Experts must make grant proposals within the amount of money that is reserved for their field. The names of the experts are not announced to the public to ensure that the experts can work in peace.

Having made their decisions the experts forward their proposals to the Executive Director of the Foundation who then presents them to the Board of Trustees. The Board of Trustees assembles two times in the fall to assess proposals and to make final decisions about the grants. To ensure impartiality and to avoid any conflict of interest in the decision-making the Board of Trustees, the experts and the staff of the Foundation are obligated to follow strict rules.

Grant seekers will receive an email and successful grant seekers will also be informed in writing in October. The Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation grants are announced October 9th. A list of grantees will be published on the Foundation’s website the following day.

The Jenny and Antti Wihuri Foundation does not justify any single grant decisions.

The evaluation of the applications is based on e.g the following aspects:

The experts evaluate the applicant’s ability to execute the presented project successfully based on the application and the attached curriculum vitae and other documents.

A reference from the instructor of the project (or from someone who is familiar with it) is essential especially for an applicant seeking funding for a PhD.

Another factor affecting the grant decisions is the ensemble formed by the applications each year. This means that the applications are also evaluated with respect to each other.